Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study, Second Edition

377 Pages·2008·5.66 MB·english

by  Alan MacFarlane

Witchcraft in Tudor
and Stuart England
Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England is the classic regional and
comparative study of early modern witchcraft. The contemporary relevance
of the history of witchcraft is very apparent. The methodology and
conclusions of this book have impacted on not only witchcraft studies but
the entire approach to social and cultural history. The book provides an
important case study on Essex as well as drawing comparisons with other
regions of early modern England. It examines diverse social backgrounds
and beliefs and questions the many sources.
This second edition of Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England is
strengthened by a new historiographical overview by James Sharpe,
Professor of History at the University of York, which places the book in the
context of the considerable fresh research of the last thirty years.
Alan Macfarlane is Professor of Anthropological Science at the University
of Cambridge and the author of Marriage and Love in England, The
Origins of English Individualism and The Culture of Capitalism.

Alan Macfarlane
Witchcraft in
Tudor and Stuart
England
A regional and
comparative study
Second edition
with an introduction by
James Sharpe

London
For my father, mother, and sister
who contributed so much…
First published 1970 by Routledge & Kegan Paul
Reissued 1991 by Waveland Press, Inc.
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Second edition published 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
© 1970 Alan Macfarlane

Introduction © 1999 James Sharpe
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0-203-06366-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-21478-1 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-19611-6 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-19612-4 (pbk)
Contents
Acknowledgements x
Introduction by James Sharpe xi
Preface by E.E.Evans-Pritchard xxvii
Abbreviations and conventions xxxi
SOURCES AND STATISTICS
1 Problems and sources in the study of witchcraft 3
2 The legal background to witchcraft prosecutions at the secular
courts 14
3 The intensity of witchcraft prosecutions: evidence from Assize
and Quarter Sessions records 23
4 Witchcraft accusati ons in other legal courts 66
Evidence from the ecclesiastical records
Borough records
Central records
5 Literary sources for the study of witchcraft 81
The background to formal prosecutions; evidence from the
witchcraft pamphlets
Contemporary comments on witchcraft prosecutions; evidence
from literary sources
6 The background to witchcraft prosecutions in three Essex
villages, 1560–99 94
vi Contents
COUNTERING WITCHCRAFT
7 Informal counter-action against witchcraft 103
8 Cunning folk and witchcraft prosecutions 115
9 The witch-finding movement of 1645 in Essex 135
WITCHCRAFT AND THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND
10 Witchcraft prosecutions and economic problems 147
11 Witchcraft prosecutions and social phenomena (1): personality,
sex, age, and marriage 158
12 Witchcraft prosecutions and social phenomena (2): kin and
neighbours 168
13 Witchcraft prosecutions and illness 178
14 Witchcraft prosecutions and religion 186
15 Witchcraft beliefs as an explanation of suffering and a means
of resolving conflict 192
16 Reasons for the rise and decline of witchcraft prosecutions 200
A COMPARATIVE FRAMEWORK: ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES
17 The anthropological approach to the study of witchcraft (1):
beliefs and counter-actions 211
The ideology of witchcraft
Counter-action against witchcraft

18 The anthropological approach to the study of witchcraft (2):
the sociology of accusations 226
19 Some anthropological interpretations of witchcraft 240
APPENDICES
1 Abstracts of Essex witchcraft cases, 1560–1680: 254
2 Definitions of witchcraft 310
Bibliography of printed and unprinted sources 314
Place index of Essex witchcraft references 325
General index 331
Besides, when any Errour is committed
Whereby wee may Incurre or losse or
shame, That wee our selves thereof may be
acquitted Wee are too ready to transferre the
blame Upon some Witch: That made us doe
the same. It is the vulgar Plea that weake
ones use I was bewitch’d: I could nor will:
nor chuse.
But my affection was not caus’d by Art; The
witch that wrought on mee was in my brest.
The Poems of Sir Francis Hubert, ed.
B.Mellor (Oxford, 1961), pp. 59–60
For example, what were the social
conditions in seventeenth-century England
that produced beliefs so very similar to
contemporary beliefs in Pondoland …and
what were the effective causes of the decline
of these beliefs? I long to read an adequate
analysis of this problem by some social
historian aware of anthropological theory.
M.Wilson, ‘Witch Beliefs and Social Structure’,
American Journal of Sociology, 56, No. 4 (1951), p. 313